The Density of Light sees super-chromatic artist Gabriel Dawe make rainbows real

Gabriel Dawe’s latest Plexus site-specific installation sees the artist accumulate thousands of strands of sewing threads, solidifying space in a vibrant, tangible spectrum of colour. The absolute precision of its making allows the viewer to perceive it from all manner of angles with the effect being somewhere between “material and the immaterial.”

Through the materials he uses, the artist returns to his childhood frustration at his Mexican heritage, the threads, and more specifically embroidery, symbolising the purported machismo mentality, the cultural roles of the genders, and a “complicated network between ideas and people.” The overall effect is both sculpturally architectural and very, very beautiful.

• 
  Gabriel Dawe: Plexus 13 & Plexus 14 at Gallery Lot 10. Photographer Matthieu Kavyrchine.

• 
  Gabriel Dawe: Plexus 13 & Plexus 14 at Gallery Lot 10. Photographer Matthieu Kavyrchine.

• 
  Gabriel Dawe: Plexus 13 & Plexus 14 at Gallery Lot 10. Photographer Matthieu Kavyrchine.

• 
  Gabriel Dawe: Plexus 13 & Plexus 14 at Gallery Lot 10. Photographer Matthieu Kavyrchine.
• 
  Gabriel Dawe: Plexus 13 & Plexus 14 at Gallery Lot 10. Photographer Matthieu Kavyrchine.

• 
  
  

  Gabriel Dawe: Plexus 13 & Plexus 14 at Gallery Lot 10. Photographer Matthieu Kavyrchine.

  Gabriel Dawe: Plexus 13 & Plexus 14 at Gallery Lot 10. Photographer Matthieu Kavyrchine.

• 
  Gabriel Dawe: Plexus 13 & Plexus 14 at Gallery Lot 10. Photographer Matthieu Kavyrchine.
• 
  Gabriel Dawe: Plexus 13 & Plexus 14 at Gallery Lot 10. Photographer Matthieu Kavyrchine.

The Density of Light will be on show at Gallery Lot 10 until June 9.

Berndnaut Smilde merges Art and Science

I love clouds and installations and art. This dude’s stuff is pretty rad.

That’s not photoshop; that’s an actual cloud hovering inside an actual room. Artist Berndnaut Smilde merges art and science to create small man-made clouds that exist — albeit for just a moment — indoors.

Smilde uses a fog machine to make the actual clouds, but also carefully regulates the humidity and temperature. Even so, these installations exists for a mere moment before dissipating inside the room. If you’re not there in the moment, then you only get to experience these brief scientific sculptures as photographs.

I found this months ago and forgot to post, but its juts so great and I know found a video to see the process in action.

Adafruit's IoT Printer

Got to get myself one of these!!

Noisy Jelly

French product designer Raphael Pluvinage and food designer Marianne Cauvard have invented a game that allows players to make sounds from jelly. The jellies are formed using gelatin, agar agar powder, water and food colouring - all placed in moulds of varying sizes and shapes. Once set, the jellies are placed on a game board that contains sensors. When the shapes are touched and manipulated, the sensors are triggered and will create different audio sounds. The noise produced is affected by the concentration of salt in the jellies, their shape and the contact pressure.

It’s a fun and appealing concept that will appeal to (and educate) both adults and children. The shapes encourage interaction and experimentation and allow users to explore the notion of sound through something tangible.

• 
• 

The Poking Machine

The Facebook ‘poke’, one of the longest-standing features on the social network, is no longer just a virtual gesture.

Designers Jasper van Loenen and Bartholomäus Traubeck have created a device that when worn can give someone a physical poke. It consists of a custom-built box that receives signals from an Android phone connected to Facebook. When someone sends a poke on Facebook to a friend, the phone sends the information to the box, which in turn releases a small lever into the wearer. Ouch.

The project explores how social networking – a typically digital activity – can be re-imagined as a tangible experience, underlining how people could connect physically as well as online. It might also make some Facebook users think twice about hitting the ‘poke’ button in future...

Open IDEO launches StartUpPlan

StartUpPlan - The Startup Planner Platform

A web platform to help startups plan their build, marketing needs and attract talent/freelancers to help with various aspects.

StartUpPlan

StartUpPlan - A Startup Project Planning Platform

This is a collaborative tool and community where someone thinking of starting up a commercial or social enterprise is taken through a number of steps to define their goals and their needs.

They would then get a project homepage with plan laid out. They can add any request for resources, funding and help.

The community then can browse the projects and offer their services in return for equity or voluntarily.

All aspects of the Startup's progress is tracked on the platform and allows team members to collaborate remotely on code, design, strategy.

For example, for a social startup, someone could come up with a great idea and be looking for coders and designers to join that projects. As they attract community talent, these people can signup to cheer the project on or become fullly-fledged team members, uploading their work and sharing with eachother. Within the space of a few days, new startups could be designed and built.

How will your concept support web entrepreneurship?

Giving entrepreneurs all the tools in one easy place.

What kinds of resources will be needed to get this concept off the ground and scale it?

It's a new web startup! Who's in?

How could we get started?

Proof-of-concept prototype up soon.

Virtual Team:

Ben Hamley (http://www.openideo.com/profiles/hamley/) originally inspired me on this idea all the way back in Queensland last May, when we were at the Food Challenge workshop together.

Visit http://www.openideo.com/open/web-start-up/concepting/startupplan-the-startup-planner-platform/

Sugru in primary colours

Exciting news! As of today, our friends at Sugru have launched  Primary Colours. Over the last year or so they have had hundreds of emails asking for different colours, and the ability to mix a wider range of colours. So… they’ve been beavering away for ages to make it work. And now were happy to say they’ve cracked it!!

Finally for those of you who prefer a subtler more invisible hack, you’ll now be able to match almost any colour. And for all you colour lovers – the mixing possibilities have just exploded!

So happy hacking everyone!

We hope you love them as much as we do!